Tusk Editor's Note: 1/17

Friday

Jan 17, 2014 at 12:01 AM

So who do you really know? Certainly we all know things about people, from the surface personalities they throw up for mass consumption to the things we perceive in subtle and perhaps indefinable ways, to the deeper, murkier id we glimpse from time to time, mostly when one gets cut off in traffic or a team loses horribly in the final seconds.

By Mark Hughes CobbTusk Editor

So who do you really know? Certainly we all know things about people, from the surface personalities they throw up for mass consumption to the things we perceive in subtle and perhaps indefinable ways, to the deeper, murkier id we glimpse from time to time, mostly when one gets cut off in traffic or a team loses horribly in the final seconds.But still: Who do you know? Everyone outside ourselves and closest intimates we view as if through a keyhole: impressions, certainly, flashes of movement and color and sound. But how do we place those glimpses in context?Often, we don't, or can't.Meryl Streep, a brilliant actor by anyone's estimation, used to put me off. I couldn't tell you why, exactly, just that there was something brittle and frightening about her. Now I kind of know why.In introducing the equally brilliant and witty, and yet warm and not at all-off-putting, Emma Thompson, Streep squawked an awkward, out of place, and what's more, wrongheaded and ill-informed rant about Walt Disney. The occasion was to honor Thompson, and of course her most recent high-profile work is in “Saving Mr. Banks,” in which she captures a difficult, hard-edged and intelligent woman — P.L. Travers, pen-name of the woman who created Mary Poppins — negotiating furiously and yet politely with Disney, played by Tom Hanks, and his team of songwriters and other filmmakers. No one wins, exactly — Travers needed money; Disney needed her approval — except the moviegoer.Streep, who apparently just discovered the Internet, resurrected hoary and long-disproved tales of Disney being anti-Semitic, anti-woman and, oh, probably the founder of the KKK and the reason paper cuts hurt so much. There's not enough space here for the details, but if, unlike Streep, you go further than skin-deep (or blog-rant-deep), you'll learn what you need to know.Had she done further research, she might have blasted friend Emma for not creating Travers true-to-life, or at least true to some of the facts of her life. Travers, whose birth name was Helen Goff, contained legions more than could fit in the film, which was, it should be stressed, not biography, but a story, built around some facts.Which is kind of like life. Capital T Truth eludes like a greased eel. It's created, in part, by the stories we tell, a point Hanks-Disney makes nicely in the film, about the point of storytelling, of art: It saves life. Not in the Heimlich-manuever sense, but in re-ordering reality. By the way, if you have recently said or thought, “You can't make this up!” please, read more. Go to the theater. Listen to music. While not everything has been made up, literally everything and anything can be made up. And more than we can imagine ... or else it would have already been made up.We're all complex, messy and screwed up, in our ways. Pick someone you think of as saintly. Mother Teresa? A book of her letters, published in 2007, revealed she doubted God. Bono? Done tremendous good for the world, and his music is more often passionate and lyrical than not, but there is that tremendous ego, and remember “Pop”? Mr. Rogers? He .... OK. Got me there. But just Mr. Rogers, all right?Those who regurgitate at the mention of Woody Allen neglect to take into account that his ex, Mia Farrow, is, or appears to be, unhinged. So what can you believe? And the same people probably play, without irony, old Michael Jackson discs, despite evidence suggesting egregious offenses. And yes, this is one of my flaws, assuming anyone who can't engage with complexity must be a shallow pop fan.Flames rose on noggins through Crimson land when Lane Kiffin was hired, because the keyhole-view via media, online forums and other echo chambers, insist he's a Bad, Bad Thing.But I don't know him any more than I know coach Nick Saban. Brace yourselves: nor do you. A funny thing: Once you leave school, unless you're a pro athlete, you can enjoy a full, rewarding and active life without ever heeding a coach again. You can watch games in full splendor, but mute buttons exist.Those who do know Kiffin? They hired him. The story remains to be told.